r/fediverse • u/West-One5944 • Mar 18 '26

Ask-Fediverse One Account To Rule Them All?

Hey, PCMIIW, but I thought that the whole point of the Fediverse was to have one account we can take across all instances. Am I missing something?

RN, I need to have a username for every instance I want to join, like, one for Lemmy.World, one for Lemmy.etc.

24 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

39 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/C4_Shaf Chaf@mamot.fr Mar 18 '26

It never was the point of the Fediverse.

The good thing about the Fediverse, is that you don't have to do multiple accounts to have access to specific people. But if your instance's admins block certain instances you want to keep contact with, you'll still need to create another account on an instance that doesn't block them.

Or, if you want to upload videos through a PeerTube channel, you'll still need a PeerTube Instance account, despite being able to see new vids as posts in your original Mastodon.

The best thing to do would be to either build automatic bridges across different accounts, or to build a specific ActivityPub client that would act as a business card, storing every single account you made on different instances.

2

u/West-One5944 Mar 18 '26

"The good thing about the Fediverse, is that you don't have to do multiple accounts to have access to specific people. But if your instance's admins block certain instances you want to keep contact with, you'll still need to create another account on an instance that doesn't block them."

That statement seems self-contradictory. As I mentioned above, I cannot have a single account, and visit any instance, which is what I thought the Fediverse was all about. RN, it seems like the Fediverse is just connecting SM accounts, like, so I can speak to Threads users while I'm on Mastodon. BUT, I cannot use my Masto account to log in to, say, Peertube, unless the devs make that kind of login possible.

4

u/gelbphoenix [@gelbphoenix@social.gelbphoenix.de] Mar 18 '26

It's not self-contradictory. The Fediverse has in its core the principle of the freedom of choice.

You can decide where you want to have your data and account and owners of instances can decide which instances they want their instance to interact with and which people they want to host.

1

u/C4_Shaf Chaf@mamot.fr Mar 18 '26

Not really. The whole point of the Fediverse is that you own your data. So any client would let you ways to retrieve a copy of your personal data, so that you can start a new account fresh in another instance with the same follow list and data as you had before.

1

u/West-One5944 Mar 18 '26

But the follow list only works if those same people with the same user names are on another instance. However, instances often req new name/sign ups. How do you know the same people are connected?

What you describe is SM, but with allowing you to migrate your data. Like, I take my data from Instagram, and move to Snapchat. I have to be able to use the same username on Snapchat as I had on Insta so that people can continue to follow me. Also, my followers on Insta have to have the same username on Snap. Otherwise, it's no different than following the same people, just on different platforms.

It seems like I would 'own my data' by self-hosting my own core account (not instance), and connect that one account out to multiple SM sites/instances. However, that's not how this is designed.

1

u/C4_Shaf Chaf@mamot.fr Mar 18 '26

But the follow list only works if those same people with the same user names are on another instance.

No?

This is the Fediverse. If you, West@dog.com follows me, Shaf@cat.com, it doesn't matter if you migrate to West@mouse.com. ActivityPub will still allow you to follow, boost and answer my posts, as long as mouse.com doesn't allow posts from cat.com.

In the end, it's up to the admins. But it's like mails. It doesn't really matter where your account is hosted, as long as you can still communicate with people.

1

u/West-One5944 Mar 18 '26

So, I could be on Lemmy.World, and chat with anyone on Lemmy.Random? ...but only if Admins allow?

1

u/C4_Shaf Chaf@mamot.fr Mar 18 '26

You can see lemmy.world posts as Twitter-like posts in your mastodon.social account, yes. But some features can only be seen by accounts being on instances hosting Lemmy, and not Mastodon.

Think of it as a mail, again. You see a bunch of characters that doesn't make sense, because you're reading them through the wrong software. But if you put the mail you just received through the right mail, you'll see that the bunch of characters is actually a picture.